Archive for month: July, 2016

The tech world has long perpetuated the “if you build it, they will come” myth — the idea that great products will inevitably find their market and fly off the shelves. But a great product is not enough. Without a clearly defined sales and marketing strategy, even the giants among us can fail. Wendy Lee’s recent piece on the uncertain future of #Yahoo CEO #Marissa Mayer brings to light a cautionary tale for tech marketers.

Mayer’s strategy for Yahoo relied heavily on attracting a talent pool to build great products, thereby drawing a large audience and hence, advertising budget. But without integrating product, sales, and marketing from the get-go, Mayer’s strategy amounted to a chain reaction that never set off. Successful strategists iterate the marketing and sales processes in tandem with product development. And you don’t need to be a Yahoo or a Google to get the job done – check out our survivor’s guide to #tech marketing for more on do-it yourself marketing and scaling effectively.

As veterans in the b2b technology space, we understand the unique challenges of #partner marketing. When technology partners go to market, they want to tell a unified story, but also each maintain their unique brand and identity. We help our clients deal with those challenges; bringing partners together to tell a unique story that rings true to both partners’ voices. Theresa Caragol of thewhir.com sets out a few best practices to meet the challenges of partner marketing.

We are in the golden age of #content marketing. With the proliferation of marketing automation tools we can engage like never before with hyper-targeted audiences. Advanced analytics deliver in-depth insights to us in real time. But sometimes we get caught up in our shiny new tools and lose sight of the most fundamental content marketing wisdom: humans crave compelling stories. In the past we’ve written about the power of stories and how to humanize content. This week, we’d like to share some wise words from econtent magazine’s Andrew Martin on how to bring the art of #storytelling back to #b2b marketing.